For retired director, 'coming to Grace just felt right'

Elizabeth Crowe, who is retiring from being director of children's programs at Grace Missions. Here, she helps helps Travis Davis, , learn multiplication at an after school program run by Grace Mission Episcopal Church in the Joe Louis Housing Complex in 2013.(Photo: Michael Schwarz/Democrat files)Buy Photo

If only they wore little badges. Or if a harp would trill when they entered the room. Maybe if a silken wing would occasionally protrude beneath a jacket… then the rest of us could identify the seemingly saintly among us who without hubris and with no hope of material gain, willingly offer their gifts and perhaps souls, to others.

We probably all know them, quiet, hard-working, anonymous individuals who give to their fellows and are compensated in a spiritual currency in which most others don’t trade.

But Elizabeth Crowe, the recently retired Director of Children’s and Family Ministry at Grace Mission in downtown Tallahassee, could tell you which has more value — her former life of foreign travel, private schools, corporate directorships with big pay checks — and the one she has lived for the last 18 years as cook, dishwasher, bus driver, and teacher to the needy served by Grace Mission.

“Coming to Grace just felt right,” she says of the handing over of her first life for the other.

Crowe was the middle child born to a strong stay-at-home mother and career Naval officer father in Memphis nearly 70 years ago. But with Navy transfers and her father’s ascending commands, little Elizabeth found herself exposed to a fairy tale world of palaces and chateaux.

“My father’s assignment was in Europe and the family was able to travel all the time. I went first through third grades in France, wearing white gloves to a private girl’s school, learning and speaking French, and since we lived in a chateau overlooking the grounds at Versailles, riding our bikes in its gardens, playing up and watching garden parties and fireworks over its spires.”

Trying out bBiochemistry, then switching to English Literature and French as majors, with a plan to return to France, Crowe graduated from the University of Tennessee. But as plans sometimes do, France was replaced with Atlanta when Crowe fell in love, married, and right-angle-turned into another life.

The next years proved Elizabeth Crowe was not just a princess used to exotic locations and a handy chateau. She joined in an entry position at what became Bell South and quickly demonstrated her work ethic and organizational skills.

“My parents taught me that if you do it… do it right. That “good enough” wasn’t good enough.” Her corporate climb through management at Bell South found her in Human Resources, Engineering, Forecast Analytics, and Consumer Services where after 27 years, she had over 500 people reporting to her. She was President of the Rotary Club, on the Boards of the Boys Club and the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Elizabeth Crowe was at the top of her game. And then she decided to retire. She was only 49 years old.

It may not have been a “Siddartha” moment—the veil suddenly dropped from the young prince’s eyes and his subsequent quest for enlightenment. In fact, Crowe, whose Episcopal faith is strong, had been quietly “filing” impressions of Christian living and believing for years.

“When I was in Japan, I taught English at an Episcopal Church there. It was diverse—poor fishermen praying beside wealthy kimomoed ladies, each of them practicing their faith in a culture where Shintoism or Buddhism was the norm. I realized then that faith was a choice, in their case, a radical one. They became one community there. Being rich or poor didn’t matter. Helping one another did.”

Later, with her father’s retirement, her parents created a Free Medical Center and shelter for women. “They had always given to others in ways that really helped,” says Crowe. And now, she too was ready to “give back.”

Crowe had met friends, Episcopal Pastors Michael and Sterling Henderson who had previously done jail ministry. Now they were moving to Tallahassee to found a church that would be a support and transitional space for those leaving prison. They invited Crowe to join them, asking her for a two-year commitment. “Eighteen years later, I guess I’ve fulfilled that,” she smiles. “During these years, I’ve never been poorer and at the same time, I’ve never been richer.”

For those first years, Crowe, the corporate executive who read French in her off hours, was the Mission cook. Later, the small Children’s Program became hers. “There had been only 3-4 children, only a few supplies, and really nothing formal for after-school learning or academic support,” she says. Crowe developed and enlarged it into an academic program that assists students from the Springfield Apartments, known as the Joe Lewis project, in accumulating points for their specified Accelerated Reading requirements.

She compiled a large library for reading at all ages, and perhaps most basic, she made it possible for the children to get to where the help was. “I got a CDL Drivers License so that I could drive the big bus,” she laughs. That way, children would be picked up from school, study at Grace Mission, have a ‘home-cooked’ dinner there (often made by Crowe), and be dropped off at their door afterwards, again by Crowe.

Currently, the After-School Program, SOAR, is housed at Ruge Hall at the Episcopal University Center on the FSU Campus. Invited to make it their permanent home in 2016, the kitchen, chapel, dining room, and library are available to the 18 children who arrive three-days-a-week for tutoring.

“And it’s my FSU, TCC and FAMU volunteer tutors who make all the difference,” says Crowe. “The Community Ambassador Program at FSU allows students to work 10 hours per week with us, others come just because it is so rewarding.” The volunteers are also responsible for intriguing experiences like getting to know crabs, dabbling in chemistry, and just plain play on Landis Green. “We get to see student’s report cards and we work in collaboration with parents too,” says Crowe. “It really does take a village…” This fall there will be 18 tutors in the elementary program. An additional Middle School program was added two years ago, and a Summer Reading Program takes place every year. Grace Mission currently has the largest After School Academic Program in Leon County.

Amanda Nichols, Vicar at Grace Mission has known Elizabeth Crowe for the last nine years. “Yes, she works 50-60 hours a week… And it’s because she has such a passion for what she does… to see kids do well and succeed. Most of these children would not be harboring dreams of being nurses or biologists or surgeons… and now you hear that. They are confident and accomplished. I think Elizabeth considers them her children, in a way… she certainly loves them like her own.”

Crowe herself mentions two children who have touched her especially deeply. “I met these two little boys in the first grade,” she says. “Now Camry Wooten is at TCC on his way to FSU and his brother, Javon Wooten is on an athletic scholarship at Augusta University.” It was the note that Camry sent upon hearing of her retirement that for a moment brings a break in Crowe’s very practical demeanor:

“You are the resting-beat of my heart that I will always return to. Thank you for loving me and believing in me. I wouldn’t be here without you.”

Pastor Amanda agrees. “As St. James tells us, you act on your faith with deeds of love. This is Elizabeth Crowe.”